Ion-Mihai Tetcu, aka itetcu@, aka ionut, has stepped down from his dutiesÂ on the FreeBSD Ports Management Team.

Ion-Mihai was the one who initially gave us Ports QAT, which gave almostÂ immediate response to a problematic commit, then he enhanced with withÂ other tests, such as installation of all ports to a non-standard DESTDIR.Â These combined efforts paved the way for cleaner commits to the ports tree.

On behalf of the Ports Management team, we would like to thank Ion-MihaiÂ for his many years of service and dedication.
Thomas
on behalf of portmgr@

The FreeBSD Ports Management team is pleased to announce that MathieuÂ Arnold (mat@) and Antoine Brodin (antoine@) have been promoted to fullÂ voting members of the team after a successful launch of the portmgr-lurkersÂ pilot project.

Each of them brings new skills and vast experience to the team. PleaseÂ join me in welcoming them aboard.
Thomas
on behalf of portmgr@

In years gone by, and I am thinking of FreeBSD 7.0 specifically, portmgr@
gave some latitude to *ALL* committers to “just fix things” to get a port
into shape. In the case of 7.0, it was making ports build for gcc4.

What we have laying ahead of us is a ports tree in various states of modern
preparedness (new style USES=, stagefication, etc) and the old way of doing
ports (boo!).

We would like committers, and contributors to generate a PR and/or “just
fix” the old ports to update them to the new way of doing things regardless
of maintainership. We are looking for fixes in the following areas

This can be done with implicit portmgr@ blanket approval, and without
maintainer approval.

Please, however, respect some boundaries, do not change ports belonging to
kde@, gnome@ or x11@. These teams work in private repos that may have
changes pending.

Also, cross reference GNATS, to see if a port has an open PR that you can
factor into the fix. It is important to stress here that we *DO NOT* want
to invalidate existing patches that a maintainer has offered up or already
approved.

If the change is very trivial AND has been tested, “just fix it”. One of
the strengths of the Ports Collection is it’s volunteer maintainers, if you
make a change, regardless of how trivial, just send a courtesy email to the
maintainer.

In this interview, we talk to the newest member of the team, Bryan Drewery. Â Bryan first came to the attention of many by adopting portupgrade and friends, and then jumping into pkgng and poudriere.

Name

Bryan Drewery

Committer name

bdrewery

TLD of origin

.net

<Editor’s note: while Bryan claims to be a netizen, it is believed he is originally from .us :)>

Occupation

Software Engineer

When did you join portmgr@

March 2013. Joined FreeBSD as a committer in August 2012. As a contributor
in March 2012.

Blog

http://blog.shatow.net is my blog. I have not made much effort on it yet but
have a lot of ideas and content to add eventually.

Inspiration for using FreeBSD

It took a long time for me to discover FreeBSD. I wish I had 10 years
sooner. My first experience with a computer was with MS-DOS 5. Then I worked
up through Windows 3.1, 95, 98, XP. Somewhere around here I discovered Redhat
5 and shortly after Debian and Gentoo. In high school I took an AP CS class
that used FreeBSD 4, which was my first introduction to it. My first
introduction to ports was in the same class where not having root and wanting
to install an application I went into /usr/ports/irc/BitchX and tried to ‘make
install’ and failed of course. I still wish this worked. Shortly after that I
started doing work for a Shell Hosting company that used FreeBSD 4.10. At this
time I was still much more fond of Linux though. When I met my Wife, she was
also doing Shell Hosting with FreeBSD. That’s when I started doing actualdevelopment on it and customizing the system. I found that with FreeBSD Icould customize the system far more than I could with any Linux distribution.
This is what sold me the most and led me away from Linux. Though I do still
use Linux for Xen dom0 and some development.

Who was your first contact in FreeBSD

Probably garga@ qmail patches I sent in years ago. Once I discovered pkgng
though it was bapt@. That’s what led me to becoming a committer. I actually
knew zi@ outside of FreeBSD too from when I was an EFNet oper.

Who was your mentor(s)

Baptiste Daroussin (bapt@) and Eitan Adler (eitan@)

What was your most embarrassing moment in FreeBSD

Wiping systems of course. One of which was someone else’s system who ran my
bad code!

vi(m) / emacs / other

I was a longtime (6 years) pico/nano poweruser (haha) until I discovered vim
in my first real job.

What keeps you motivated in FreeBSD

I just like to write code. It’s hard for me to let go of things I put a lot
of effort into! I got into this with the intent to help get packaging working
for my own servers and to takeover ports that were abandoned that I felt were
critical for my servers.

Favorite musician/band

There’s so many. Lately I’ve been listening to metalcore and post-hardcore
bands. http://www.last.fm/user/bdrewery has all of the music I listen to.

I used to drink insane amounts of diet Mt. Dew. Not anymore though, no
caffeine for me.

Do you have a guilty pleasure

I get into games every now and then. Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii. I love Windows
7. I’ve been a Mac user for a few months now as well.

sendmail / postfix / other

qmail. My mail server is something that I setup years ago, hacked at quite a
bit with custom patches and never want to redo again.

What is your favorite TV show

Breaking Bad, Lost, The Wire, Dr. Who, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter.

What sports team do you support

I’m not really into rooting on sports teams. I enjoy playing much more than
watching.

What else do you do in the world of FreeBSD

I maintain upstream for portupgrade and poudriere, help with pkgng, qmail,
openssh-portable. I also am starting to work more in the src world. I maintain
portmaster but have not put much real effort into it. For portmgr I help test
Mk/ patches, I do exp-runs, help manage the package building systems, and fix
Mk/ bugs as I run across them.

What can you tell us about yourself that most people don’t know

I was involved with the eggdrop IRC bot project and have been maintaining a
pretty popular fork of my own for the past 10 years.

I wanted to run a webserver, and I wanted something free. I was going
to use something linux, then met up with a former prof from university,
and shared my story with him. He told me FreeBSD was the way to go.

Who was your first contact in FreeBSD

clsung, miwi, rafan

Who was your mentor(s)

clsung/miwi

What was your most embarrassing moment in FreeBSD

I reset a bunch of ports that were name@??.FreeBSD.org, because my
script was only checking for @FreeBSD.org. I was called on it
privately, to which I immediately reverted my commit.

Boxers / Briefs / other

Boxers

What is your role in your circle of friends

Oddly enough, social convener

vi(m) / emacs / other

vim

What keeps you motivated in FreeBSD

I just love that I (and anybody for that matter) can contribute the most
trivial of things, and watch it go live.

Favourite musician/band

Favourite of all time is The Beatles. On the home front, I am huge fan
of the Canadian band Barenaked Ladies. I was so fortunate to even meet
them back stage at a concert in 1997.

What book do you have on your bedside table

The Beardmore Relics. It is a fictionalised story of hoax about
viking relics that were discovered near Beardmore, ON, a little
community I lived in back in the late 70s.

Â coffee / tea / other

Coffee, intravenous if possible!

Favourite whisky

Springbank

Do you have a guilty pleasure

Sitting around in comfortable lounge wear, watching Sci-Fi on TV

How would you describe yourself

N-Space, multidimensional nerd.

sendmail / postfix / other

sendmail for internal use, postfix for anything exposed to the Internet

Do you have a hobby outside of FreeBSD

I am a senior apprentice bicycle mechanic with a grass roots movement
called Bicycles for Humanity

What is your favourite TV show

Big Bang Theory. Physics was my other interest I followed in
university. The interaction among the friends, is uncannily similar as
that among my friends. Fortunately we have no Sheldon. And Barenaked
Ladies do the theme song

Coffee and a bagel. Â I have that almost everyday, so when I say to people,
“You expect me to remember BLAH? I don’t remember what I had for
breakfast yesterday?” there is an implied irony.

What sports team do you support

Pro hockey – The one and only Montreal Canadiens
Pro lacrosse – The Toronto Rock
University hockey – Lakehead University Thunderwloves

What else do you do in the world of FreeBSD

core@, donations@, formerly kde@

What can you tell us about yourself that most people don’t know

I used to play the bagpipes. Was “fair” at it. My band was invited to
play at the “Toys on Parage” in Santa Ana CA back in 1987. Astronaut
Neil Armstrong was the parade marshall, and I can claim that I was at a
black tie reception with him. I was performing with the band, and I wasn’t
allowed to get near him, but I can at least say I “partied” with him.

Any parting words you want to share

Always remember the Golden Rule, “Do unto others, before others do unto you”,
or something like that

In this interview we talk to one of the Annoying Reminder Guys, Erwin Lansing, after Joe Marcus Clarke, the second longest serving member of portmgr@

Name

Erwin Lansing

Committer name

erwin (not edwin)

Inspiration for your IRC nick

My research, back in the day, as a post graduate on fruit flies
(Drosophila melanogaster)

ccTLD of origin

.nl

Current ccTLD (if different from above)

.dk

Occupation

See above
Network and system administrator at DK Hostmaster A/S, maintaining the
.dk ccTLD.

When did you join portmgr@

2004 as portmgr secretary, 2005 as a voting member

Blog

http://droso.dk/

Inspiration for using FreeBSD

Quite the usual story, going from Slackware to RedHat to Debian to
Gentoo to FreeBSD after starting at a web hosting startup, and never
looked back.

Who was your first contact in FreeBSD

The one and only web server running the startup I joined after giving up
on academic life.

Who was your mentor(s)

edwin (not erwin)

What was your most embarrassing moment in FreeBSD

Copy/pasting diffs into email into GNATS with all the whitespace fun
that ensued. Many times!

Boxers / Briefs / other

boxers

What is your role in your circle of friends

Who needs friends when one has IRC?

vi(m) / emacs / other

nvi

What keeps you motivated in FreeBSD

It’s the best well-hidden success story in operating systems, by
now in the hands of more people than one can count and used by even more
people, and not one of them knows it! It’s not only the best
operating system currently around, but also the most supportive and
inspiring community.

Favourite musician/band

U2 (yeah, I’m that old)

<editor’s note: tabthorpe is older>

What book do you have on your bedside table

The rough guide to Portugal, though soon to be replaced after returning
from vacation

coffee / tea / other

coffee, strong and black

Do you have a guilty pleasure

see previous

How would you describe yourself

more coffee

sendmail / postfix / other

postfix

bind / nsd / knot

all of the above

Do you have a hobby outside of FreeBSD

There’s life outside FreeBSD?

What is your favourite TV show

Currently replaying Lost, looking forward to the next season of Top Gear

Claim to Fame

Structuring internal procedures inside portmgr as secretary, keeping the
pointyhat cluster alive and building packages for way past its best
before date, and now maintaining Bind.